[Kricket]

..... Keep your light and voice at hand.
Weather wear and tear, the drum
Let not your eyes grow dumb
For Darkness lingers, every bend
Do not heed the weary trend.
You who falls shall not rise,
Old and dreary only guise.
For in the Darkness,
Many travel,
They see not
The story ravel.

[center]

Mesertai ---------- BloodBane

It was so distinct, so rappidly there, that Kricket couldn't remember when the other scents had gone away. Like a punch to the face, or a kick in the gut, only you have no warning because the culprit moves to quickly, strikes to fast, and is gone within the moment of impact on your noes, or before you hurl a split second later.

It smelt... dead. Old, dead, and faintly green - if green has a scent at all. Her pets reeked, but that was her own fault, and she had done it purposly for this vary trip. But that old, dead, green, mustyness had almost completely covered them, never mind how much scent they had carried with them from her home. Coted in her perfume - the rank kind that makes your noes crinkle and your eyes water, and no matter how many times you wash it away, coat it with something else, its always there, like a weed that has roots to deep to get at, and thus it can't be stopped until nature says it shall, and by then the damage to your garden is horendous - her pets had practically melted the snow that they walked by, the stench was so sevier. She knew there was a draw back to this, that they would not be able to smell each other over themselves, but she had poored diferent scents on each of them, and then had spent half an hour memorizing them before actually setting out.

Now she stood before it, before old and musty and green smelling it. It. Ick. It smelt weird, it made her hair stand on end, it made her bristle, and it made her tail twitch with unplesentness. Is that a word? She didn't care, but it was almost annoying in an old, smelly, musty, innatimate way. It! Bleh.

"Shall we enter Kricket? I'm worried" The black Lucain trailed off. They had all read the post by the Land Owner, stating that to obtain the creature, they had to sacrafice something. Kricket was just so... giving. It wasn't right for her to have to sacrafice something for a pet that she didn't know. "I will know it!" she had protested, but even she was not sure what she wanted to give up.

Humidity had breen promised. God for bid the wether man be right for once. And what the heck?! Why did he have to be right on today of all days? Today! When the heat had decided to spike drastically, when Kricket had decided to make him stink like so much at once it was hard to tell what he was by scent alone, and when his breeding list had been posed up on the bulitin board! Not unusuall, but Kricket was spending more and more time with the breedings than with the pets. The newest members of the pen hardly remembered the sound of her voice, let alone what she looked like. At least now it was decently cold, considering their altitued. Kricket had grown accostomed to it, and Bane and Mesertai hardly noticed it, for it was more like her turning on the air conditioning at home than stepping into a freezer, as others had told them. They had thicker coats though, so it was probably only that.  

"We're going, we're going. It just... doesn't smell right. It smells.. old."

"It is old!"

"But you don't understand!" Her voice had risen from a startled squeek to an effective growl. Defiant, comanding, and without hesitation. "Its not good old, like my grandparents. Its.... bad old. Evil old. Evil." She explained, her pupils thinning to black lines in her irises. "It will be warmer inside. Honist." Her voice returned to normal.

What little demon that her father had passed on was riled at the thought of entering that black, unsearched, pit-thing. No one, human, anthro, or pet, should be in there. Or so it belived. But it was small, a simple rile would weeken it considerably seeing as it had to hack through hundreds of mental fire walls to actually reach her emotion base. She was astounded it had done that and not given up after the first word.

Her mind whirred at her. Questions on reality, on physics, math, science, emotional bonds, love, hate, hope, and matters beyond her comprehension. It was always like this after the thing broke loose. Her magically centered mind had to shove it back into its cage, and recheck the fire walls so that the holes could be fixed.

And it was done only a moment later.

"So, shall we saunter slowly downward?" Bane asked. Why was he imitating the land owner AGAIN? He must idolize Baal, she realised, for he said that often.

"Yes. Lets."

[Kricket]

Indeed, it was warmer inside the shrine, compared to its outer seroundings. Kricket shivered, her lack of fur becoming vary apparent. Bane and Mesertai didn't seem to mind, as they only just felt the change in the temperature, unlike Kricket who was having a hard time adapting.

After a few moments the ice dots melted off her eye lashes, and she waved them off down a corridor, dark and forboding.

Mesertai, who was keeping an eye on the path they took, felt it first. It was a subtle change in the air, a dustyness, if you will.

"This is vary old.. Vary old indeed."

Kricket nodded. She had chosen the least used hall to travel down, hoping that the Hunters would be in the deeper parts of the old shrine. It would be strange, she thought, if my Wish came to me, rather than a hunter.

But deep down she knew that now, at this point in time, she would rather have the hunter, than the Lucain. But she shook the thought away. It didn't matter. She was on a Hunter trip, not a Lucain expadition.

Bane, who had been walking next to Kricket, sighed.
"I do so hope we find one. Mesertai is so boring, and Mikii is off with who-knows-what." BloodBane particularly detested Mikii going off with another male that he didn't know, and alone at that. It rankled something in him. Kricket had observed him being vary protective of Mikii, almost possesive, and she wasn't surprised when he stated his opinion.

Mesertai only flicked his tail in responce, to busy with an inner excitement to really care what Bane said.

[Kricket]

It was.... unnatural, she thought, traveling down an old corridor, examining tapistries and paintings. There weren't that many though, so they where often left unentertained. Boredom had set in a while ago, as the path they had decided to follow had hardly any rooms conected to it.

"A room!" Bain called, excited. His voice echoed earily up and down the hall, forign and strange.

"Bout time! The last one was just a closet." Kricket commented, rubbing behind her ear. The room, she found, was actually large. Like a den, or bed room. Strange that one should be this far back, Kricket thought, isolated and such.

It was mildly furnished, with a large chair - table - lamp set at one end, and a low ground couch on the other. The middle of the floor was filled with a rug, brightly colored despite its apparent age.

"Look here!" Mesertai called, having wondered over to the middle of the rug.

He was standing over a detailed picture of a large ice-like cat, prowling the corridors of the shrine.
"Do you think that its a Hunter?" Bane asked, sniffing the rug. Dust blew up in his face, and he sneezed and gaged, stumbling backward.

"Sure does look like the one the Land Owner posted up in the Hall." Kricket murmered, examining it.

"Well I'm tired. Who wants to have a little break here?" Kricket asked, straightening up from her squating position. Bane, eyes still slightly moist from the dust, smiled encourigingly, and Mesertai nodded.

"Good, 'cuz I'm really hungry and the couch looks comfortable, despite the dust."

[Kricket]

It wasn't that Mesertai dispised dust (having learned as a young pup that it could disguise his smell from Kricket while they played) it was just that it stuck to every part of him. The moisture from that ever stinking aroma - perfume Kricket had called it - didn't help much.

Bane was in a simular situation, only he had vied for the easyer way out - standing at the center of the room. Kricket had sat down on the couch, surprisingly baren of dust, and sighed. Mesertai, sensing a mental - physical - emotional change in her, had rushed to her side on the couch, curling his legs up under him to sit. Her head imediatly fell across his side, and she sighed a mixture of worry and content. Something was going on, he knew and felt, but no matter how he probed her mind, she was so thoroughly sheilded that he had been mentally ambushed many times.

And though he had grown canny in navigating the outermost skirts of her mental fire walls, her inner mind was still tightly locked to him. But he had sensed... a certain malice when searching, and always the feeling that something was watching him inside her mind. He hadn't paid much attention to it at first, considering it an adition to her mental fire walls. But it had increased rappidly as he neared her center, and a strange half growl half cry had come from the darkest part of her magically centered mind. It had not come in sound waves - as all stimuli (sound, sight, scent, ect.) are lost durring mental connection - but in ripples of color, starting out red and turning to a deep purple. He had then be forsed to retreat by the  "Testiment", a group of inner Krickets that patroled the sections between fire walls. They had greatly protested Krickets act of giving him freedom amongst her mind, just as long as he didn't touch anything. A relatively hard thing to do when every bend and corner had imige fragments - memories she had explained - set in its walls. Some of the quite interesting. She had warned him about them, for entering one would mean altering her memories, confuzing the seals and Testiment, and vertually changing her mental/emotional/physical state. An unwise thing.

Now, as she sighed deeply, and slipped into an uneasy rest, Mesertai acted. He had been teaching Bane, who egerly accepted the ability, about Krickets mind. "Her mind is not like anothers mind, open to the wind and change of past, present, and future. Her memories are cemented in files, section, halls and corridors. You must always tred lightly, as the Testiment will attack you, and in some rare cases, invade your mind." It had happened to him once, though the seperation from its base had killed the Testiment Kricket in the end. But he didn't mention this to Bane, knowing that the over exuberant male would likely try to snag a Testiment Kricket for his own strange deeds. But, with the threat of possible insanity staining the horizon, Bane had been far more careful than Mesertai would have imagined.

"A lesson in life is learned in the strangest places life presents." He said. It was their code, and though there was no one in the room with them, he wasn't taking any chances.

Bane, reacting quickly, trotted over to them and sat on his back legs, resting his head on Krickets hand. Though Mesertai had mastered the ability to check up on her without physical contact, he didn't like to antaganize Bane with it, who might do something stupid in responce to Mesertais seperiority. So they stayed - almost set in stone by the look of it - Mesertai being pillow to Krickets head, Bane at her hand. Both had closed their eyes.

There was the traditional 'fwooshhneeeeea' that acompanied their arival to the Platform Kricket had made for them in her head. Testiment patroled the area little, as it was baren of any distingwishing features, save the smiling picture of their master in front of them.

A single Testiment Kricket - dressed in the traditional Tech-ton Tignara skin suit - walked by, her eyes a blazing silver. She nodded to them, switched her STNG (Stun Troublemakers to Noodles Gun) to her left hand, and walked on, her foot steps silent in the large hall.

"Lets go, not all Testiment are as leanient as TK 1. Thought she was aginst it from the biggining as it is."

TK 1, Testiment Kricket 1, had been the first created by "TKMII" Testiment Kricket Master Inda Irobii, who had centered Krickets mind and locked "It" away in its middle.

"Yes. The she is nice isn't she?"

TK 1 was actually an alternate personality of GGK, Grand General Kricket, their Kricket. She came into being when Kricket had been lost in the Plains at a family picknick, and being only six, and been vary confused. TK 1 was created as TK 6's counter part, TK 6 being the locked personality of Krickets six year old self, forever nervous and jumpy.